When the pandemic started, most of us naively assumed it would have an end: if not a formal declaration of victory over Covid-19, with pubs running dry and strangers kissing in the street, then at the very least surely a sense of relief. We would know it was over, and could then make sense of how this collective near-death experience had changed us as a country.
Unfortunately, life is never quite that neat. This week’s scrapping of England’s last remaining Covid restrictions is a choice that vaccines, antivirals and a milder Omicron variant have, arguably, allowed us to make, although it’s by no means clear that future variants will be so obliging. But the virus isn’t over, and we’re some way from making sense of anything.
